2016 Team Challenge Cup - Gen Info/Pre-chat

[Interspectator]

The prize money for TCC looks pretty good.

It would be a dream to see Yuzu, Denis and Han Yan together on the same team.
Fans may vote for Shoma over Han Yan though.

 

[LadyB]

The prize money has to look good at the end of the season. Good point about Team Asia! I'm sure it'll be exciting to watch once it gets started.

 

[Tyranid]

I don't see any big issues here:

NA women: Gold(5) and Daleman(20) are in. That leaves Wagner, Chartrand, and Edmunds (3=up to 5). Say Wagner wins, we get - Gold, Daleman, Wagner for NA women.

NA men: Chan(8) and Rippon(12) are in. That leaves Max Aaron, Grant Hochstein, and Liam Firus (3=up to 5). Say Aaron wins, we get - Chan, Rippon, Aaron for NA men.

So what's the problem???

I agree with you golden... Patrick has little chance of winning a fan vote if the vote isn't split between 5 skaters.

Chan is seeded through world ranking.

 

[ice coverage]

I don't see any big issues here:

NA women: Gold(5) and Daleman(20) are in. That leaves Wagner, Chartrand, and Edmunds (3=up to 5). Say Wagner wins, we get - Gold, Daleman, Wagner for NA women.

NA men: Chan(8) and Rippon(12) are in. That leaves Max Aaron, Grant Hochstein, and Liam Firus (3=up to 5). Say Aaron wins, we get - Chan, Rippon, Aaron for NA men.

So what's the problem???



Chan is seeded through world ranking.

Jason Brown and Nam Nguyen are the North American men who already should have been invited -- based on ISU World Standings as of Jan 1, per the rules.

The first batch of invitations is based on ISU World Standings (and not ISU Season's World Rankings).
And there is no requirement to compete at Worlds for the skaters who are invited based on ISU World Standings.

Chan is not in -- unless Nam has declined his invitation. We'll find out on Feb 29.

And Rippon is not in.
If Jason has declined his invitation, Max IIRC was the next highest U.S. man in the World Standings on Jan 1.

ETA, correction:

Adam was the next highest U.S. man after Jason in the World Standings on Jan 1. Apologies that I misremembered re Max. Adam is next in line if Jason has declined his invitation.​

 

[TMC]

Jason Brown and Nam Nguyen are the North American men who already should have been invited -- based on ISU World Standings as of Jan 1, per the rules.

The first batch of invitations is based on ISU World Standings (and not ISU Season's World Rankings).
And there is no requirement to compete at Worlds for the skaters who are invited based on ISU World Standings.

Chan is not in -- unless Nam has declined his invitation. We'll find out on Feb 29.

And Rippon is not in.
If Jason has declined his invitation, Max IIRC was the next highest U.S. man in the World Standings on Jan 1.

Thanks for replying. There are so many comments about the rules that I was starting to get confused and doubting my own reading comprehension skills.

The rules are (to me) pretty straightforward: Top two are chosen based on World Standings as they were on 1 Jan 2016. They must be from different countries and they must be the top skaters from their country in the standings. The rest are voted in and they must be skaters who took part in Worlds 2016.

 

[ice coverage]

I agree with you golden... Patrick has little chance of winning a fan vote if the vote isn't split between 5 skaters.

I am not sure I like the format of this event anyways... It's sort of weird. A lot of Olympic sports are doing mixed team events nowadays, for instance, Luge is doing a relay event...even skiing does it... from all these sports, I think figure skating has the best shot at making a successful mixed team event but by making such complicated rules that clearly do not give the same weight to all four disciplines, it just confuses fans...

I will be very curious to see how many votes are cast. That will be the highlight of the competition for me.

Thanks for replying. There are so many comments about the rules that I was starting to get confused and doubting my own reading comprehension skills.

The rules are (to me) pretty straightforward: Top two are chosen based on World Standings as they were on 1 Jan 2016. They must be from different countries and they must be the top skaters from their country in the standings. The rest are voted in and they must be skaters who took part in Worlds 2016.

Extra weight on men and ladies compared to dance and pairs has been tolerated by at least some fans -- for four editions of WTT dating back to 2009.
So the unequal weight is not new. But still could be confusing, I suppose.

Thx to TMC for a concise statement of how the skaters are chosen.

That said, I agree with 4everchan that the TCC format has a lot of complicated details in general.
But having paid some attention to the mixed team event at YOG, I have come to realize that designing a mixed event is easier said than done.

 

[Mathman]

And I believe (although Mathman previously has disagreed with me) that "up to five" means that in order to make the voting more interesting, Kristi hypothetically could -- for example -- decide to nominate only Patrick and one American man (instead of all three: Adam, Max, and Grant).

Of course Kristi could hypothetically nominate only Patrick and one American man. For that matter she could hypothetically nominate only Patrick.

The only thing I disagree on is the "interesting" part. I guess "interesting" is in the eye of the beholder. I would be interested to see how many votes Max got compared to Adam, even if Chan beats them both. I would be interested to see whether Chan gets more votes than all three Americans put together. I would be interested to see whether Grant gets any votes at all (besides mine. )

 

[ice coverage]

Of course Kristi could hypothetically nominate only Patrick and one American man. For that matter she could hypothetically nominate only Patrick.

The only thing I disagree on is the "interesting" part. I guess "interesting" is in the eye of the beholder. I would be interested to see how many votes Max got compared to Adam, even if Chan beats them both. I would be interested to see whether Chan gets more votes than all three Americans put together. I would be interested to see whether Grant gets any votes at all (besides mine. )

Agree that interesting is in the eye of the beholder.

[I meant "interesting" mostly in the competitive sense, I guess.
For example: I would have been very interested to see Jason's skates at 2016 US Nats, but I also would say that his unfortunate withdrawal made the event more "interesting" from a competitive standpoint, esp. once we knew that he had petitioned for a slot on the world team.]

Anyway ... remains to be seen whether the results of the fan vote will be announced simply as (for example): Man A is the winner of the vote for Team North America -- without any details as to how the other nominees fared.

I'm not counting (no pun intended) on the announcements going so far as to spell out that Man A received X number of votes; Man B received Y number of votes; etc. Or even to spell out that Man B placed second; Man C placed third; etc.

 

[Tyranid]

Jason Brown and Nam Nguyen are the North American men who already should have been invited -- based on ISU World Standings as of Jan 1, per the rules.

The first batch of invitations is based on ISU World Standings (and not ISU Season's World Rankings).
And there is no requirement to compete at Worlds for the skaters who are invited based on ISU World Standings.

Chan is not in -- unless Nam has declined his invitation. We'll find out on Feb 29.

And Rippon is not in.
If Jason has declined his invitation, Max IIRC was the next highest U.S. man in the World Standings on Jan 1.

Is there a way to check world standings for previous months?? I used the updated list and knew I could be wrong.

 

[ice coverage]

Is there a way to check world standings for previous months?? I used the updated list and knew I could be wrong.

I don't know whether there is a way to see World Standings as they appeared at time points in the past.

With a little arithmetic, we can make isolated comparisons.
For example, if we subtract the 840 World Standings points that Patrick received for Four Continents, Nam has more points than Patrick.

And now that I look at the current standings, I see that I need to apologize for misremembering re Max.
Adam in fact would be next in line after Jason.
Subtracting the 446 points that Max received for Four Continents puts him lower than Adam. (I will add a correction to my post above.)

 

[NaVi]

Is there a way to check world standings for previous months?? I used the updated list and knew I could be wrong.

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.isuresults.com/ws/ws/wsmen.htm

 

[slider11]

I'm going, and I'm super excited because it will be my first international competition! (I'm also quietly hoping that Chock/Bates decline so I can see the Shib's Fix You :scard8

The Shibs are National champions. Why wouldn't they be first choice? Or is this on the entire year's ISU points? Some skaters are not psyched to do these after a disappointing year, have other skating or personal commitments are just plain tired. If Chock/Bates regain their momentum at Worlds maybe they will want to go.

 

[4everchan]

golden : yup... i have followed previous versions of team event and even the one at the O games, if probably the closest to fair for all disciplines left me cold. the wtts were very unfair IMHO...

the simplest version and I just say this in passing, as I don't want to intrude in this thread... would be a competition were maths are used to level all disciplines...

if the top score in the men is M, then M is equal 100 % and the rest becomes a percentage relative to that.

top score of the women is W, W is 100% and the rest is relative.... etc

+ P + D (for pairs and Ice dance)

So D+P+W+M = the total score... maximum being 400% which could be divided back by 4 to make the it to a mark out of 100 to make it very easy for the public to decipher... that way, it would not only value each discipline but also, it would take into account the gap between the skaters in each discipline... i'm sure there are flaws in this method too but i'd prefer this anyways

 

[Mathman]

The Shibs are National champions. Why wouldn't they be first choice? Or is this on the entire year's ISU points? Some skaters are not psyched to do these after a disappointing year, have other skating or personal commitments are just plain tired. If Chock/Bates regain their momentum at Worlds maybe they will want to go.

Chock and Bates are already in.

Weaver and Poje are already in.

Shibs are out. (Unless C&B decline the invitation before Monday.)

- - - Updated - - -

Anyway ... remains to be seen whether the results of the fan vote will be announced simply as (for example): Man A is the winner of the vote for Team North America -- without any details as to how the other nominees fared.

I'm not counting (no pun intended) on the announcements going so far as to spell out that Man A received X number of votes; Man B received Y number of votes; etc. Or even to spell out that Man B placed second; Man C placed third; etc.

You are probably right about that. But I was kind of hoping that they would keep a running total during the voting period. That way we could log on, see that our favorite is falling being, and start campaigning. :yes:

 

[shyne]

Team North America will be announced on Monday, February 29
Team Europe will be announced on Wednesday, March 2
Team Asia will be announced on Wednesday, March 9

 

[Mathman]

golden : yup... i have followed previous versions of team event and even the one at the O games, if probably the closest to fair for all disciplines left me cold. the wtts were very unfair IMHO...

the simplest version and I just say this in passing, as I don't want to intrude in this thread... would be a competition were maths are used to level all disciplines…

I m pretty sure that the reason the WTT uses placements instead of scores, whether scaled to 100 or not, is because in the latter case teams with very weak pairs and dance would have 0 chance of being competitive. With placements, a team like Japan (which is, after all, the host), could be in the mix on the strength of their men and women even if their pairs and dancers can't contribute much.

Ordinal placements do treat each discipline equally (this is somewhat masked by how they present the results), and it is perfectly easy for audiences to understand that one team beat another by a score of 68 to 63 (placements), rather than by a score of 93% to 85%.

 

[4everchan]

I m pretty sure that the reason the WTT uses placements instead of scores, whether scaled to 100 or not, is because in the latter case teams with very weak pairs and dance would have 0 chance of being competitive. With placements, a team like Japan (which is, after all, the host), could be in the mix on the strength of their men and women even if their pairs and dancers can't contribute much.

Ordinal placements do treat each discipline equally (this is somewhat masked by how they present the results), and it is perfectly easy for audiences to understand that one team beat another by a score of 68 to 63 (placements), rather than by a score of 93% to 85%.

then don't make a team event if you want to make it into a singles event because the host country doesn't have pairs/dance teams... that's why I dislike it. All countries have weaknesses... why is it that the country that has two weak disciplines still can win it all ?

Figure skating already has a bad reputation for rigged judging... why make an event that looks silly even to my friends who are just casual fans

end of rant for me

 

[ice coverage]

... I was kind of hoping that they would keep a running total during the voting period. That way we could log on, see that our favorite is falling being, and start campaigning. :yes:

I do agree that your idea would be beneficial in engaging fans, MM.

Reminds me of when Kori Ade was nominated for an "inspiration" award after Sochi, and running tallies of votes for each nominee were displayed on the website of the company offering the award. At least a couple of Kori's fans on GS kept very close tabs on the horse race, and were doing a lot of cheerleading here on GS, esp. at certain times when it seemed that one or two other nominees were getting votes at a faster rate than Kori. (In the end, Kori did win one of the two awards, IIRC.)

---

golden : yup... i have followed previous versions of team event and even the one at the O games, if probably the closest to fair for all disciplines left me cold. the wtts were very unfair IMHO...

"Left you cold," eh? [Just noticing your usage of the much-discussed phrase.]

I would be happy if the WTT format were changed to give equal weight to all disciplines.

But for me, awareness of the existing imbalance among disciplines has not prevented me from enjoying WTT, because I am a sucker for the team concept in general. The skaters at WTT in 2012, 2013, and 2015 seemed to enjoy the experience, and I enjoyed watching them enjoy it.
(I wasn't paying attention to skating in 2009, so I missed the first WTT.)

---

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.isuresults.com/ws/ws/wsmen.htm

Many thanks, NaVi.

 

[silverfoxes]

then don't make a team event if you want to make it into a singles event because the host country doesn't have pairs/dance teams... that's why I dislike it. All countries have weaknesses... why is it that the country that has two weak disciplines still can win it all ?

Figure skating already has a bad reputation for rigged judging... why make an event that looks silly even to my friends who are just casual fans

end of rant for me

What about the Japan Open? I don't love that format at all, but I've never seen anyone else complaining about it the way they complain about this...are people just killing time until worlds?

 

[4everchan]

hehe japan open is very different since it's an invitational event, and if it's a bit biased in some ways, at the same time, kuddos to japan for organizing it and getting fans to see freshly retired and still popular skaters compete alongside current skaters... i think that's why people don't complain as much as it's not proposed as a real "team championship" event... and yes... we do have time to kill

What about the Japan Open? I don't love that format at all, but I've never seen anyone else complaining about it the way they complain about this...are people just killing time until worlds?